Avery Bates, the vice president of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama, shows off what calls 'Dauphin Island Bacon,' -- fried mullet. Bates and others from Mobile County are at Soma Church in Holt, on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa, providing hot meals as part of the tornado relief efforts. (Tuscaloosa Bureau/Don Kausler Jr.)

HOLT -- Avery Bates peeled back paper towels covering food in a metal pan and showed off some of the delectable leftovers from lunch.

"That's what we call 'Dau­phin Island bacon,'" the vice president of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama said last week. "Fried mullet."

Soon it would be time to fire up the fryers again in­side the trailer parked out­side Soma Church, a structure that was virtually untouched by a deadly April 27 tornado that destroyed nearly everything else around it.

Bates and his organiza­tion that boasts between 200 and 300 members have been on the receiving end of aid following natural disasters. Now it was time to give back, by hauling and cooking fresh seafood for this town's tornado victims.

"Many people from here came to our neighborhood after Katrina," said Bates, who lives in Bayou La Batre. "It's always good to be able to help your fellow man."

Ernie Anderson, the president of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama, came through Tuscaloosa County last week after the storm. "He asked the pastor if they needed some assistance -- cooking some meals, whatever we could do. We also brought a generator," Bates said.

That generator probably is capable of powering a miniature mall, said Brian Miller, the church's disaster relief coordinator.

"It was as welcome as the food," Miller said. "If you don't have power, it's hard to maintain a lot of effort."

Helpers from Bates' association have been coming and going. The fifth-generation commercial fisherman planned to stay through this weekend.

Fresh catch is coming in daily.

"We had a couple of hundred pounds of fish this time," Bates said. "We had 600 pounds of shrimp the other day."

Jim Racine of Baldwin County came to and from Holt last week, accompanying a shrimper.

"We've seen stuff through hurricanes, but here, there's just nothing," said Racine, a cattle farmer who owns Racine's Feed, Garden & Supply in Robertsdale. "I've never seen anything like it.

"They had Katrina real bad in the bayou over there. We had Ivan. When it came through our farm, I thought there could be nothing worse, until I saw this. This is devastating."

Bates called the hard-hit neighborhoods "eye-opening."

"It's like an atomic bomb hit in some of these areas," he said. "We know tragedies, from many, many devastating storms. I've seen some people a lot older than me say they have never seen this much damage in the state of Alabama."

The intact church amazes him and others.

When the fairly new church was built, Miller said, a Bible was encased in each of the four cornerstones.

"All of the studs in the rafters of this place have Scripture verses that were written on by marker by the people building the place," Miller said. "They simply did that just because, from the ground up, they wanted this place to be a testimony, to be a witness to God's presence.

"This place is the only structure standing that's capable of being used as a distribution point. It's the only thing left."

Bates said he hopes the federal government learned some lessons from Katrina about recovery from a natural disaster. "I hope they get these people some housing," he said.

He is encouraged to see that help is not being restricted to FEMA and the National Guard.

"We had this after Katrina," Bates said. "Whether it was the Red Cross or religious groups, so many denominations stepped up and took the place of the government."

Miller is grateful for the time and food donated by members of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama.

"They've pumped out tons of hot meals that we were able to carry out into the community," Miller said. "A lot of people might have had granola bars or sandwiches, day in and day out. For them to be able to provide some good, hot food, it's made a tremendous difference in the community."